Policy Control and Charging (PCC) encompasses systems that manage a QoS policy for an enterprise. A QoS policy manager can be static or dynamic. Some standardized policy managers for managing and enforcing QoS policies for an enterprise are compliant with a 3GPP standard that provides a way for the access network to grant QoS to a Mobile Station (MS) based on policy rules. The association mechanism for a one-to-one access bearer and application association has been thoroughly documented in the WiMAX Forum and 3GPP standards. In these cases the application requests are tied directly into the access bearer QoS allocation. The current 3GPP PCC technical specifications are:                “3rd Generation Partnership Project; Technical Specification Group Core Network and Terminals; Policy and Charging Control over Gx reference point,” 3GPP TS 29.212 V8.0.0 (2008-05);        “3rd Generation Partnership Project; Technical Specification Group Services and System Aspects; Policy and charging control architecture (Release 8),” 3GPP TS 23.203 V8.1.1 (2008-03); and        “3rd Generation Partnership Project; Technical Specification Group Core Network and Terminals; Policy and Charging Control over Rx reference point (Release 8),” 3GPP TS 29.214 V8.0.0 (2008-03),all of which are incorporated herein in their entirety by reference. PCC allows QoS requests to be correlated to application QoS requirements so that applications can help authorize QoS requests based on policy. An Application Function (AF) communicates with a Policy Control and Charging Rules Function (PCRF) that makes policy decisions. These policy decisions are then communicated to the Policy and Charging Enforcement Function (PCEF) which usually resides in the access gateway. The PCEF carries out policy decision by creating and controlling access bearers. In WiMAX networks, the PCEF resides in the ASN-GW.        
In this document, “access bearer” comports with the PCC definition of“IP-CAN bearer,” for example, as noted on page 7 of 3GPP TS 29.212 V8.0.0 (2008-05) identified above. “Application flows” in this document comports with the PCC definition of“IP flows based on AF Service Information” for example, as noted on page 7 of 3GPP TS 29.212 V8.0.0 (2008-05) identified above.
Radio Area Network (RAN) vendors can use a bandwidth manager as a central point in the network to submit QoS requests for services that do not have a dedicated AF using PCC interfaces. For instance, the Camiant BoD Manager 3.1 described in “Bandwidth on Demand Application Manager User's Guide,” Doc-00005, Revision E, and which is available from Camiant, Inc. of Marlborough, Mass. Camiant BoD Manager 3.1 provides such a bandwidth manager. A bandwidth manager can serve as a sort of surrogate or substitute AF that submits application flow requests to the PCRF to get access bearers established on behalf of certain services. Further, a bandwidth manager submits a QoS flow request on behalf of an application flow request to provide an access bearer with the appropriate QoS properties. In some embodiments, the bandwidth manager supports standardized Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) based interfaces to web servers and third party application servers. In other embodiments, non-standardized interfaces can be provided to web servers and third party application servers in order to support QoS functions. For instance, an end user can click on an accelerator button on a web portal to get increased bandwidth for general web traffic via the bandwidth manager.
In some embodiments, the PCC definition is used to manage QoS flows over access bearers. A wireless RAN vendor, for instance, WiMAX, only supports a limited number of access bearers per MS interface or wireless gateway. There is a need to support dynamic service flow allocation based on the PCC definition in WiMAX Forum NWG version 1.5. Currently the WiMAX Forum only specifies methods for a single application session to be mapped to a single WiMAX Service Flow. Current products only have a one-to-one association between application flow and access bearer. Current standards only associate an access bearer with one application flow.